13 Things Kids Don't Know About Tz'dakah

SIEGEL, DANNY

13TMNGS KDSDONT KNOW ABOUT TZ'DAKAH ? I confess: about a year ago I had decided I wanted to devote all my lecture and teaching time to adults. I believe it was largely for selfish reasons—the...

...I am told...
...Charity USA (NY Times Books, 1979), by Carl Bakal, was recently published...
...A good scream now and again at the Education Establishment is healthy for the community, though frankly the past has shown that educators and teachers react disappointingly slowly...
...One out of forty or fifty has heard of one or knows of one in the local community...
...Moshe Ber from Detroit (whose American name I forgot) is named for a great uncle whose two brothers died...
...2) "As much as is necessary...
...A threatening, discouraging gap is created between the Hebrew School and Keren Ami days and the young Jew's emergence into the Big World where the preponderant number of young adults find themselves unaware of the privilege of giving...
...For forty years her mother was the president of the Chessed Shel Emet Society of Yonkers, New York, collecting money from members and other people of the community to insure a proper burial for everyone...
...A generation where brains mean everything, achievement per se is rewarded with high honors, and the heart is left to atrophy...
...Neighborhoods in the States say the same, "Property values...
...8. They Do Not Know The Nature And Extent Of Exorbitant Overheads...
...3) "As much as you want...
...About 85-90 percent of the hands go up...
...Some say, "Trees...
...There was more, of course, but generally I demanded more, a broader vision of life, a deeper understanding of joy and tsoris, loss and redemption of the people, more than the kids could give...
...3. They Do Not Know Where Their Keren Ami Hebrew School Tz'dakah Money Goes I ask, "Where did your Keren Ami money go...
...The Shulchan Aruch stales, "One should give up to a fifth of one's possessions—that is the Mitzvah to an extraordinay degree...
...Some smaller, volunteer organizations (such as the paratroopers) can function with no overhead or minimal expenses...
...To me, this is no problem...
...I was in Israel one summer and met a group of them on tour...
...And this will depend on the degree to which we can try and recapture the masses of our young people to the thrills of Jewish learning and Jewish living...
...describe friends with two separate checking accounts, one for Tz'dakah and one for daily expenses...
...A store owner could tell me "the true real-life story of making a living," a doctor could bring me into the intimate realms of Life and Death, a lawyer could share his exhilaration in overseeing an estate where $100,000 was left for the Jewish deaf or a day school...
...Would you give if you knew that only 43i was used for what it was supposed to be used for...
...I ask, "Why do you think the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch say that even a poor person must give Tz'dakah...
...Waste, And Fraud...
...My parents are cheap...
...The funds are usually turned over to some central office for distribution...
...What I am really saying is that I envy them...
...Now all that we need is a sweeping, revolutionary, never-done-before re-ordering of our Jewish educational priorities: the badgering of teachers and principals and rabbis, the hell-raising with synagogues and JCC's, the battering down of old, seamy doors of the Establishment to get them to see that the alternative is a generation of bright, well-degreed, well-to-do egocentric Jews...
...2. They Do Not Know What Jews Do With Unclaimed Bodies New Jersey...
...In Toronto...
...I was cheated...
...The answers are hazy, halting, unsure...
...Partly this will require a great deal of work in the purely technical aspects of the Halachah...
...do some Tz'dakah-mathematics with them...
...Indeed, the response, with the proper, sensitive presentation of the material, is nearly universally enthusiastic...
...6. They Do Not Know Where To Find The Jewish Poor In Their Community I ask, "Suppose you wanted to make sure some Jew living in poverty had a decent Pesach or Sukkot meal—where would you go...
...There is a man in Jerusalem—a former Clevelander—on the lookout for Mitzvot to do...
...In Utica there are Tzaddikim...
...Raise hell...
...Zoning laws...
...The American Cancer Society," "The Red Cross," "United Way," "Goodwill," "The Salvation Army," "Federation...
...Where or how they give or how much or why...
...Instead, Orthodoxy appears to be operating out of a sense of insecurity...
...They Were Not Informed That Bar Or Bat Mitzvah Time Was The Time To Begin Full-Fledged Sophisticated Tz'dakah Giving I ask, "How many of you were told that you should have taken 10-20 percent of your bar or bat mitzvah money and given it away to Tz'dakah...
...A couple of hands more go up as the students begin to recall stories...
...They have no name or printed publicity for their organization, except, I Suppose, "The Chevra," and word of mouth...
...Three answers: (1) "Ten percent...
...At $35,000 far this college education—and this is a conservative figure nowadays—if you take away 10 percent of $1,000 of the Bar Mitzvah gifts, that leaves $100/$35,000, or .28 of one percent...
...Well, de facto, this is already the case...
...I think that some think that Keren Ami is really Karen Ami, some lady who has been supported in High Style through their contributions and who will some day visit their school and say, "Thank you for the Gelt...
...Well, only potentially so...
...This is what people tell me...
...A friend in Israel tells me that a director of a certain charitable institution bought a car from the institution's budget which is used minimally for the institution, mostly for private use...
...In fact, there are quite a number of them, but they're mostly for American Jews...
...This article is only a summary of some of the negatives, the holes in one area of Jewish education: Tz'dakah— Gemillut Chassadim, how Jews give away their money, their time, their energies in acts of gentle kindness...
...Such-and-such a street...
...This is an indication of what happens when the mystique of Judaism, and of the Jewish people, gives way to norms which are entirely alien to us...
...Best Boy...
...I'm struck by the fact that if you're correct, one would assume that the best political solution to the current controversy would be for the Orthodox to permit the Conservative and Reform movements their day, on the theory that they would then quickly simply crumble of their own lack of weight...
...One tenth is considered an average percentage, and less is considered miserly...
...And some answer, "Giving is a sign of a Jew's self-dignity, a privilege...
...No Jew, without his express consent, should be sent to an anatomy table, or a potter's field, a poor-man's grave...
...7. They Do Not Know Jewish Retarded Adults I ask, "How many of you have retarded relatives...
...A documentary of Ira's over-fifty retarded cousin Phillip, it was shown again and again at the festival and then began to move to the commercial theaters...
...Rhode Island, area there was minimal response...
...Sometimes I become Hellfire and Brimstone...
...I'm sure that it would require very major changes to condition the Orthodox community to assume reins of leadership that will govern the overall destiny of our people, inside and outside Israel...
...Go see it when it comes to town," I suggest...
...The December 19, 1979 New York Times, reporting an investigation of fundraising tactics of New York police associations, stated that as much as 90 percent of the money was kept by the professional fundraisers hired to solicit funds...
...Always more than half, usually more than three-quarters...
...5. They Do Not Know What A Jewish Free-Loan Society Is I ask, "What is a Jewish free-loan society...
...So Moshe Ber told me, his face showing pride, his words coming in a rush of joy and admiration...
...Not every one lives at or below the poverty line, but that is the map with which to start...
...By now, it is clear I should provide some summary of this backlog of informal statistic-taking...
...So I do think that the present situation in Israel is far from fossilized...
...1. They Do Not Know About The People For Whom They Were Named I ask them, "How many of you know your Jewish name...
...The Talmud indicates that a Met Mitzvah—an unclaimed body—is a particularly sensitive category of Mitzvah, one to be handled with specific care...
...No response...
...Shirley works the switchboard at the Jewish Theological Seminary...
...There is a group of people in Israel—ten or fifteen paratroopers whose friends were killed in the Yom Kippur War—who collect money for their friends' orphaned children, for summer camp, for bar mitzvahs, for whatever...
...thinking that the name itself will tell them...
...If you raise the issue of Iranian Jews, they are sympathetic and willing to commit time, and money, to a solution...
...They are definitely not apathetic to the tradition and insights of Tz'dakah...
...We stray to the topic of the need for bodies for medical school anatomy classes...
...What often happens is that I take ideas from a talk with the kids, and Danny Siegal, a contributing editor of moment, is a poet, writer, and lecturer, who has served as Tz'dakah Resource Specialist for the USY Israel Pilgrimage for the past four summers...
...A Chessed Shel Emet Society buries people, occupying itself with the dead to such a degree that it insures any Jew—no matter how poor, no matter how anonymous—a proper burial, with dignity, with a marker...
...If we have to run a modern state, then obviously pioneering and research work will have to be done to see how the timeless principles of Jewish law can be applied to the timely conditions involved in the administration of a modern state...
...I ask, "What is a Chessed Shel Emet Society...
...A group in Florida responds: three out of twenty-eight, two of whom described a person who always davened and was always at shul...
...Hence my concern to devote the bulk of my interests and time to the promotion of intensive Jewish education...
...It was the only expression of Judaism...
...I say to the kids, and to the adults, "Any place that doesn't send you a copy of its budget when you ask for one should not get your money...
...A dozen kids, two doctors' children...
...They have heard of these things...
...UJA fundraising expenses and overhead range from 9-11 percent, an astoundingly low figure...
...Money is my parents' own business...
...This generation is much more involved in volunteer work, infinitely more bound to the destiny of the State of Israel, distinctly more committed to the rescue of Soviet Jews and other Jews in danger than I was at their age...
...The near-unanimous opinion is that an unclaimed body should automatically be given to a medical school...
...I ask, "Would you have wanted your money to go there...
...Half say, "Israel,"— maybe 65 percent...
...And the same goes for every other area of the Orthodox experience—its relation to the thinking, the science and technology, indeed the culture of our age...
...I have seen a couple of my friends leave the field and two more are about to leave, at least for now—excellent people—and I can say unequivocally that I do not blame them...
...No more than one out of five responds...
...About 50 percent of the hands go up...
...Oh, I am absolutely convinced that we are the people of eternity, and will prevail over any future tribulations, as we've done in the past...
...But I cannot see that a purely alien import, not only alien in the sense that it happens to come from abroad, but that it is conditioned by circumstances abroad, is going to be the answer to this problem...
...While the former may be true of the next generation, I do not believe the latter to be the case...
...It can be explained by the old joke, "What is the difference between ignorance and apathy...
...But, of course, the fact is that until the last century that was the situation, and it was the authentic tradition, now called Orthodoxy, that in fact did insure Jewish continuity, and determined the destiny of our people...
...Rarely (except Boston, Miami, and some other scattered locales) is Tz'dakah taught as a course...
...Jewish tradition, rather than take advantage of the vulnerability of one who has died without friends or relatives, demands the utmost concern and accommodation...
...Except in New York (most of the young Jews know of the 200,000-300,000 poor Jews on the Lower East Side, in Queens, in Brooklyn), the answer is occasionally, "In the old Jewish section of town...
...Justifiably so to a great extent...
...Everyone should have that privilege...
...The one he works with has not had a single default in eighteen years...
...there is a certain mobility and dynamic in the present situation...
...The results of my review are recorded, besides, in the hope that what I have learned from the young will bring about a distinct shift in the direction of Jewish education...
...I mention homes with pushkas where the family sits together to decide where the money should go...
...I ask, "Where—besides for trees—in Israel...
...The shock of the day school is that it is in Toronto, a place where much has been done for retarded adults by Rabbi Joseph Keiman...
...It is a lengthy, detailed account of just why we must be careful...
...and if I had some business to provide me with parnosseh—some livelihood other than teaching and lecturing—I would also join their ranks...
...They were notified by hospitals and other agencies of a death, and if there was no one to bury the deceased, they would make all the arrangements...
...No reasonable answer other than saving for college, an Israel trip, and similar very expensive projects...
...Silence...
...And specifically to the kids, "Particularly because you may have so little to give—be careful...
...You were cheated...
...They Do Not Discuss Tz'dakah At Home, Nor Do They Know Why It Is Not A Topic Of Discussion With Their Parents I ask, "How many of you discuss Tz'dakah at home with your parents...
...Susan is named "Chaya Sara," for a great aunt who used to bake challah for the poor and leave the loaves on their doorsteps before Shabbas...
...I believe it was largely for selfish reasons—the adults could offer me more insights from their own life stories and varied fields of expertise, and I could therefore conclude a talk having been that much more personally enriched by their ideas...
...I don't know and I don't care...
...Larger percentages had met great athletes than had met Tzaddikim...
...Passionate discussion follows, sensitive insights, honest concern...
...Extraordinarily responsive...
...People who make it a day-to-day activity, their Tz'dakah work...
...Walkathon," "Jogathon," "knocking on people's doors," "people knocking at our door for Girl Scouts or The Heart Fund...
...Tz'dakah continued from page 50 retarded, and they are responsive...
...Let's take an exceptional, fancy case," I say...
...The frustrations are well-known and on a grand scale...
...The usual...
...I ask, unsure myself, surprised that my home was an exception...
...But they had all met brilliant people, people with straight A's on their report cards...
...Danger...
...It is almost never made a prominent part of the rabbis' speeches to the bar or bat mitzvah child...
...Even the High Priest is obligated to handle the burial if necessary (though Kohanim are generally forbidden to come into contact with the dead—except their own close relatives...
...They Do Not Know The Difference Between Tz'dakah And Fund Raising I ask, "What Tz'dakah projects have you been involved in...
...Later, I am more astounded when the local Jewish professionals tell me the child was right...
...Having lived for so many years now, in such critical years in our people's history, as one of a group of contending movements, is it ready for the grace that needs to attend power...
...Each of the three brothers had three or four children—ten in all, and this Moshe Ber chose to raise all ten...
...I ask, "How many of you might find others, if you asked your parents about the family tree...
...Five out of sixty hands go up...
...I say, "Speak with your parents and grandparents...
...9. They Do No Know How Much They Are Supposed To Give I ask, "How much should Jews give to Tz'dakah...
...There is a Tzaddik in Pittsburgh who goes to mental institutions in a wide area, providing for the Jewish retarded and mental patients who need Pesach and Purim and Chanukah...
...It is obvious that the topics of Tz'dakah and Gemillut Chassadim are generally mentioned only on the most primitive levels in our Jewish schools—including the day schools and yeshivot...
...one is unsure...
...All of them, at that one study session, major organizations...
...I ask, "How many of you know for whom you are named...
...Much of my material is still addressed to adults, but I have just reviewed the recent few years' discussions with the "kids"—seventh graders through college students— and I see that I have learned things I could never have discovered from the parents or grandparents...
...These may, perhaps, eventually produce new nuances of orientation, such as we've seen in 19th century Germany with the rise of the so-called Neo-Orthodox movement of Samson Raphael Hirsch...
...And now that rabbis have surrendered the ultimate control of Jewish affairs to an assortment of politicians, communal "machers" and public relations experts, we, for the first time in our millenial history, are haunted by the threat to Jewish survival...
...Most say nothing...
...They answer, "So that they will be reminded that no matter how poor they might be, there is always someone in a worse condition...
...Let's assume the child goes to Brown or Princeton or Brandeis or Harvard...
...But usually the answer is no hands raised, no words...
...If they knew the grandeur of the lives of those who played a part in their lives before they were born—the kindnesses of a beloved aunt, the openheartedness of an uncle lost in the war, the generosities of a grandmother whose only legacy might otherwise be one single photograph from the Old Country—if only they knew, they might wish to assimilate those mentschlech qualities into their own lives...
...And I ask, "How many of you know anything about the person for whom you were named, how they lived, what their personalities were...
...The question is not whether we will survive, but who and how many will survive...
...There is a couple in Jerusalem that collects old wedding dresses that they lend to poor brides...
...bring the results to the parents some other time—the questions and answers of some of the new generation, a generous but responsibility-laden gift for the adults...
...Suspecting a particular reason, I ask, "How many of you were told to put your money away for college...
...There were staggering reviews, despite the most primitive movie equipment, including crude hand-held microphones...
...Shirley remembers sitting with her mother at the cemetery before the High Holidays, with a pushka, collecting coins and dollars for this Mitzvah...
...I once said that so long as rabbis were in control of the Jewish destiny, the one problem that Jews never faced, never even raised on their national agenda, was the problem of Jewish survival...
...The exception I know of—though there are more, I am sure—was a rabbi-friend who gave a pushka to each bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah child...
...In Sacramento, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, New Haven, St...
...The children emerge into Jewish adulthood with a siddur or kiddush cup or Shabbat candlesticks, but no nicely-designed pushka, no list of Tz'dakot to commit themselves to...
...On the other hand, the younger generation's frame of reference was narrower: school grades, achievement, first love and unlove, junk-food, decisions for college and graduate school...
...Is Orthodoxy ready for that kind of power...
...Often I let it pass...
...There's nobody to prevent anyone from establishing a Conservative or Reform congregation in Israel...
...Perhaps three out of forty-five raise their hands...
...The Metropolitan Police Conference of Eastern New York (comprising some eighty patrolman's associations) collected $676,000 in 1978, of which $436,000—64 percent—went to a private fundraiser...
...His latest volume of poems...
...4. They Do Not Know Jewish Tz'dakot I ask, "Could you name for me some places where you could give your money...
...Why not...
...The topic is "Introduction to Jewish Medical Ethics...
...They look around and the new neighbors say, "No...
...How many of you have met a retarded Jewish adult, enough to have had a conversation with him...
...a film by Ira Wohl, became a "sleeper" and an "event" at a Toronto film festival...
...And Tz'dakah collectives: people pooling their Tz'dakah money and meeting to decide where to give...
...Let's assume that your predictions about the growing centrality of Orthodoxy, given the birthrate, given the very high morale of the Orthodox movement, are correct, and that within a generation or so, there is in effect a return to that time when there was no such thing as Orthodox Judaism, because the two words were synonymous...
...The Irene Gaster Hostel for Retarded Adults in Jerusalem is in the middle of a long struggle to find a new location...
...Often there are broader aspects to their work, youth-group projects such as entertaining at the local old age home for Purim and Chanukah or a local clothes drive, but more often than not, they describe organization or school projects: a car wash, raffle, and the like...
...Louis...
...I found a map...
...Once a Gemillut Chessed—Free-Loan— Society is explained, some show skepticism that anyone would do anything for anyone for free...
...I gather that your belief, based both on the empirical data and on your own ideological conviction, is that Jewish survival is not really in jeopardy...
...not asking for the connotations, but merely the dictionary definition...
...I ask the students, "What percentage of your dollar goes to what the publicity says...
...They do not know the most basic rules, the mechanics of Tz'dakah, nor do they have many human precedents or models...
...Exaggerated, said humorously, typically by a teen-ager...
...TV news at Christmas time reminds people to beware...
...A Jewish day school:) Ten out of forty-five hands go up, eighth and ninth graders...
...And the body is considered so precious—so important is the dignity of a person, alive or dead—that he may be buried even in the immediate area where he is found, if that is necessary...
...They Do Not Know What A Righteous Person Is, Nor Have They Met One I ask, "How many of you have ever met a righteous person...
...all wonderful material for my mind and writing, rich with the strong rhythms of People and Dreams, Dignity and Hope...
...I ask, "Why didn't they— parents, teachers, rabbis—tell you that...
...The neighbors are forcing them out...
...It is your money...
...The Jewish Catalog, Volume II, pages 424-25 (the Yellow Pages) lists a few of the free-loan, free-shelter, and free-clothes organizations in the American and Canadian Jewish communities...
...In the Providence...
...Then let us begin this one last shrei, a simple non-scientific review of what I have learned from the "kids" about Tz'dakah...
...The demonstrations and manifestoes, placards and marches, and sit-downs and strikes—the whole Megillah of tactics we learned in the '60s can now be put to full use L'Shem Shamayim—for the sake of heaven and for the Jews' own self-integrity and preservation...
...We don't talk about anything...
...I believe—as an exasperated educator—that the children are being deprived of models...
...There is no listing for it in the catalogue of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and I am certain that is true of other institutions for advanced Jewish study...
...Much is being done on this, and considerable progress has been made, but the process would have to be greatly accelerated...
...Even if he is on the way to performing the Passover sacrifice, he must delay that and bury the unclaimed body...
...Look at the very significant growth of the so-called Baal T'shuvah movements, now commanding quite a variety of institutions specifically geared to people who are groping, who've had no Jewish background and seek a new form of commitment, based of course on Orthodox traditional values...
...One hand in twenty, two out of fifty...
...There is a saving grace, though— a critical one...
...An absolute "No" from everyone...
...Nine Entered Paradise Alive, was recently published by the Town House Press...
...I am astounded, and assure the student that this is certainly not the case, and that she should search for other possible reasons...
...At one-point, eight non-Jewish charities had been named, and only one Jewish Tz'dakah...
...They are grossly and embarrassingly ignorant of its wonders and joys...
...through a friend who works with the Jewish elderly, with red dots for every house where an elderly person lives who receives a government-subsidized meal (either at homes or at designated centers...
...In another place, another teen-ager asks, "What does 'righteous' mean...
...many of these indicating that all they know is that it was "some great-aunt," "a grandfather...
...David Weiss, renowned Jerusalem immunologist and lecturer, informed me that there are 250-300 Gemillut Chessed Societies in Jerusalem alone...
...Mention the loneliness of the Jewish elderly in their community, the alienation of the Jewish deaf (whose intermarriage rate is very high), the needs of the Jewish continued on page 56 Jakobovits continued from page 24 stream of Orthodox life in Israel, and denounced as such, have a special role here...
...Exactly...
...One raises his hand, but is confused: he is thinking of senility, an old aunt or grandmother in a convalescent home...

Vol. 5 • May 1980 • No. 5


 
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